Closer by Morning

by Thom Collins

  “Let’s see if we can change that, eh? Let’s have champagne in bed all the time.”

  He laughed. “Maybe not all the time.”

  “At least once a week?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Everything was good for Matt in that moment. Though it was his first time in Dale’s bed, first time in his house, it was all so comfortable. There was no awkwardness. Lying next to Dale, drinking champagne, he knew he belonged there.

  It was a large bedroom, decorated in a neutral tones, in keeping with its rental status. But there were personal touches here and there. Dale had tried to make the place his own. There were photographs of him with a young kid, around twelve years old. That had to be Jack. Just from the photos, Matt could see so much of Dale in the boy. They shared the same dark blond hair and clear blue eyes. There was a pile of scripts on one of the dressers, the pages covered in handwritten notes and yellow Post-its.

  “Where do you live when you’re not filming?” he asked.

  “Nowhere.”

  “What?”

  “It’s true. This is it. I live in hotels and rented apartments. I don’t have a place of my own yet. I was waiting to see how things panned out for me in the UK before setting down roots. If I couldn’t find work, then I couldn’t afford to stay. I rented with another actor in South London for a while, but that’s gone now. He needed a more permanent tenant and had to replace me when I came up here.”

  “What will happen when the show wraps?” Matt asked.

  “I haven’t thought that far ahead. My agent is negotiating a couple of offers, but nothing has been signed. Those offers could disappear when the papers come out tomorrow. If I’m lucky, I might get back into European horror films. I heard they’re casting for An Axe in the Dark 4. Maybe they’ll want me to play my twin brother. If not…”

  “The series could be a success,” Matt said.

  Dale shrugged. “Could be. In spite of everything. I can’t see it happening, though. There’s just too much that’s gone wrong for anything good to come out of this mess. There’s no focus. I’ve worked on my fair share of stinkers and this gig is starting to smell. It’s a shame, because it began so well. It had the potential to be great. Everything starts with good intentions, I guess.”

  “Don’t be so down on it.” Matt reached for the champagne bottle and refreshed their glasses. “Keep working hard and hope for the best. That’s what I always do.”

  ****

  Clint Dexter was back in control. His breathing, heart rate, blood pressure and emotions had all returned to normal levels. He’d fucked up in the biggest way. Losing it with the faggot at the gym—he couldn’t go back from that. But now that he was thinking practically, he understood that it would all have ended today anyway. If Matt had come to the gym as he was supposed to, and Clint had been able to do the things he wanted, it was unlikely he’d have gotten away with it. Matt was too well-known. The police would soon come sniffing around. There was no way he’d have been able to continue like before. Things were always going to change today.

  Even so, he’d fucked it up spectacularly.

  He had to work fast if he was going to get away.

  The gym wouldn’t open until morning. No one would find Conrad before then. That gave him around twelve hours to make his escape. He’d taken cash from the safe in the office and picked up the emergency stash he kept at home. It was enough to get going.

  Except he was going nowhere without the thing he wanted most.

  Without Matt this would all have been for nothing.

  Matt wasn’t at home. He didn’t expect him to be but it was worth checking anyway.

  He knew exactly where to find him. With the bastard American.

  It was all so fitting—he would kill two birds with one stone.

  He had followed the American home from the studio one night and knew where he lived. The remote house in the hills was perfect for what he had in mind.

  Clint Dexter always got what he wanted. Matt Blyth would be no exception.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Funny what the eye sees without ever really taking notice.

  Jamie must have passed the gym on Dunston Street countless times but never paid attention until now. It stood on the main road, sandwiched between a kitchen design company and a bridal wear shop. He hadn’t paid them any attention either. Why should he? He had no need for the services of any of them. He would never get married, his flat was rented and the gym was for losers. Well, maybe not losers, just people with too much time on their hands. He didn’t need to work out when he had such an active job. He never gained weight. Older colleagues warned him it would be different when he was older. He would worry about that when the time came.

  Right now, he was trying to find out what connection, if any, two of the murder victims had to this place. Did they know of each other? If so, that changed the thrust of the whole investigation. DCI Redgraves was working on the assumption that the victims were unconnected. If Jamie could prove otherwise—he could forget about going back to regular duty when the case was closed.

  Darkness had cut in when he pulled up outside and approached the door.

  It was locked and the shutters were down over the windows.

  Weren’t these places supposed to stay open late for the hardcore roid-heads?

  He peered through the gaps into the metal shutters. Most of the lights were off inside. The skeletal silhouettes of equipment were lit by dull, emergency lighting. As he stepped back he saw the handwritten sign on the front. There was a fault with the plumbing and the note directed the plumber to use the back door. That was more like it. If the manager or any of the assistants were still around he could ask them to check their membership records. He didn’t have a warrant and hoped it wouldn’t come to that. This was a murder investigation after all. Any reluctance to help would be treated with the suspicion it deserved.

  He walked to the end of the street and around the corner. The alley was dark but not so much that he couldn’t see. He counted the doorways until he found the gate leading to the back yard of the gym. It didn’t look promising. There were no plumbers’ vans in the alley. Maybe he was too late. He tried the door anyway, on the chance the plumber hadn’t arrived yet. It was Friday night after all, no one would come out in a hurry, not with overtime and emergency fees to be claimed.

  But the door was locked.

  Damn it. Jamie knocked, hard. There was no reply. He knocked again, even harder, banging the door with his fist.

  “Police,” he shouted. “Anyone in there?”

  No answer.

  This was so frustrating. Police work was all about patience, but he was loath to get so near to a puzzle and leave without a resolution. The sign said the gym would reopen in the morning, maybe he should wait till then. He could swing by here on his way to work and perhaps have a lead to follow by the time he reported to Redgraves. But he wouldn’t be able to settle tonight, not when he could be on to something.

  He leaned up to look through the window at the back. It was small, not really showing much of anything. There were bars across the frame. Beyond, he could see into a small office. There was a desk, a computer, magazines and folders spread across the surface. And…blood. What? Jamie grabbed the bars and pulled upward for a better view.

  It looked like blood. Smeared across the desk and the chair behind it.

  He hitched higher, angling to see more of the floor. Stained papers littered the office and there, just visible, right beneath the window itself, what looked like a foot. A man’s foot in a bloodstained sneaker.

  Jamie’s heart began to pump faster. Blood and adrenaline coursed through his body. He dropped down into the yard, digging his phone from his jacket. He called it straight in, giving his name and rank, requesting immediate back-up and medical assistance. But he couldn’t wait. God knows what had happened on t
he other side of that door. The poor bastard might not have the time it would take for the ambulance to get here.

  It might be too late already.

  There was only one way to find out.

  He had to get through that door.

  Whoever had left had done so in a hurry, neglecting to turn the deadbolt. The door was secured by a single Yale lock. Putting his shoulder and all of his weight into it, he rammed the door. Once, twice, it gave on the third run. Jamie spilled into the tiny back kitchen. There was blood all the way to the door.

  So much blood.

  He proceeded with caution. From the pattern of blood on the floor he was certain whoever had done this had already left. It must have been too dark in the yard for him to notice the stains on the concrete. Regardless, his training came to the fore. A dead hero was no good to anyone. He advanced steadily, checking every corner, tuned in to danger.

  He had a good idea of the layout from what he’d seen through the window. He turned the corner, into the office, expecting something awful.

  What he found was worse.

  The figure on the floor did not move. And the blood—there was so much of it. Its bitter scent assaulted his nostrils. He could even taste it, a horrible tang that caught in the back of his throat. It was impossible to know where it was all coming from. The man on the floor was covered in it. The poor guy’s exposed buttocks gave some indication of the damage he’d been dealt.

  The man lay face down, one arm flung above his head, the other at his side. Jamie reached for that nearest to him, grabbing the wrist, searching for a pulse. He felt nothing and pressed even deeper into the wrist. It was there. Thank God. It was weak and thready, but he could feel it.

  Jamie grabbed his phone and called back in. “Tell the ambulance to hurry,” he said. “We’ve got an unconscious male and a lot of blood.”

  What he’d learned in compulsory first aid training kicked in and he checked the man over from head to toe, searching for the most obvious injuries and a way to stop the bleeding. There were no puncture wounds. Most of the blood seemed to come from the man’s head and his backside, which meant the damage was internal. He needed that ambulance right now.

  “Hello,” he said, loud and clear. “Can you hear me?” He put his mouth close to the man’s ear and asked the question again. No response. But he was definitely breathing. Jamie tilted the man’s head, very gently, to open up his airway. If he was unconscious, his biggest risk was choking.

  As he moved the man and looked at his face, Jamie froze. Despite the damage, he recognized him.

  Oh, God, it’s Conrad O’Brien.

  ****

  “Hungry?”

  “Absolutely starving,” Matt replied. “I can’t survive on sex and champagne. As tempting as it sounds.”

  Dale stroked his naked hip. “You’ve got to keep your strength up. The night is young.”

  The champagne was finished. They had consumed the rest of the bottle as they’d basked in the tranquil afterglow of their lovemaking. Outside, the evening had turned to darkness. Dale rolled off the bed and drew the curtains against the night. He padded naked into his dressing room and came back wearing a casual pair of shorts and a gray T-shirt, which looked as if it had been made especially to complement his muscular body. He handed Matt a pair of short lounge pants and matching T-shirt.

  “Seeing as I forced you to come straight from work, why don’t you put these on?”

  “There I was, thinking you were going to keep me naked all weekend.”

  Dale gave his bare ass a playful tap. “If that’s what you want, my love, don’t get dressed on my account.”

  Matt slipped into the soft blue pants. “What would Mrs. Butterman say if she found out you were entertaining naked men with her casserole?”

  “I expect she’d be jealous. ’Cause you’re tastier than anything she could rustle up in the kitchen.”

  Matt laughed. “Did you learn that corny line in one of your movies?”

  “Hey, that’s bona fide B-movie gold. Come on, let’s eat.”

  They went to the kitchen, where the scent of Mrs. Butterman’s cooking was even more delicious than before. Matt’s stomach rumbled loudly. He was hungrier than he’d thought.

  “Can you hold out ten more minutes?” Dale asked, setting a pan of water on top of the stove. “I want to cook some rice to go with this. There are some rolls in the bread bin if you need something to tide you over.”

  “I can wait, just about.” Matt gazed out of the kitchen window. The darkness beyond was absolute. Out here, it was so different to living in town, where the nights were never completely black. “No sign of the hungry press yet.”

  “Let’s hope it stays like that.” Dale tipped rice into the pan. “Maybe I overestimated their interest in me. Maybe an old actor coming out of the closet is no big deal after all.”

  “It’s pretty remote out this way,” Matt said. “They might not know where to find you.”

  “They always find you, believe me. Someone on the crew will give up my address if the price is right.”

  “Has anyone ever told you, you might be paranoid?”

  “They don’t have to. Believe me, I know that already.”

  “Maybe it’s because of all those horror films you starred in. You see bogey men on every corner.”

  The pan of rice came to the boil. Dale poured two glasses of white wine and guided Matt to the kitchen table.

  This was so unlikely. Sitting down to dinner with a man at home. When Matt was with Jamie, they had hardly ever eaten a meal at the same time. One or the other of them was always working late. Dinner, if you could call a diet of ready meals and takeout pizza dinner, was usually eaten on a tray in front of the television. Eating like this, with Dale, was so much nicer, more grown up. It seemed right.

  “Cheers.” They clinked glasses.

  Dale sipped the wine then put down the glass. His fingers moved slowly around the stem as he gazed thoughtfully into the straw-colored contents.

  “The long drive back here today, it really gave me a chance to think. Nothing to do but follow the road for miles and miles. I haven’t had an opportunity like that in ages. When I didn’t have to think about work, or a script, or Jack. When I could think about myself and what I was doing. Not only me, that sounds so egotistical, but about what was going on here. These murders. The wasted lives. Aaron and those other boys.”

  Matt nodded. “It does put a lot of trivial problems in perspective.”

  “Exactly. It made me realize that I’ve been doing everything all wrong. Moving around, living for the job, jumping from one shitty movie to the next. Never settling down. I don’t even have a place to call home. I’m tired of that. I want more from life.”

  Matt reached across the table and put his hand gently on the back of Dale’s. “Only you can make those changes.”

  “I know. And I’m going to. I want to reprioritize my life. What I’m saying, badly, is that one of those priorities is you. I know it’s only been a couple of weeks but I love you, Matt. And I don’t want to throw that away by leaving town for the next job.”

  Matt’s heart beat faster. In a quiet way, he’d also been worrying about their future and whether they even had one. He didn’t want to spoil what they had right now by thinking too far ahead, but he was aware that when production on the series ended there would be nothing to keep Dale here. When his work took him all over the world, how could they ever sustain a relationship? However much they loved each other, realistically, he knew it had slim chance of working.

  “For one thing,” Dale said, “I’ve decided to take an extension on the house. I can take the lease until the end of the year. It will give me a base—a home—till I can find somewhere else. And, when the show is over, I want to take you away. How about it? Do you have any vacation time due? We could go someplace for a couple of we
eks, somewhere quiet with plenty of sun. Just the two of us.”

  An unexpected mist came over Matt’s vision. Tears of joy pricked the back of his eyelids. He blinked them away, smiling.

  “It sounds like heaven.”

  They leaned across the table, their lips uniting, cementing their dreams for the future.

  ****

  Clint parked a little under a mile from the house, pulling onto a side track that couldn’t be seen from the main road. He made his way cross-country to the exclusive development at the top of the hill. In its day, this would have been a working farm, providing livelihood and shelter to hardworking countrymen. Now, it was a privileged hideaway for pampered rich folk and their spoiled brats.

  It gave him an honest degree of pleasure to know that after tonight, these overpriced barn conversions would lose a good chunk of their value, and the remote hill top location would no longer be such a desirable place to live. It would become a shrine for morbid tourists.

  These peaceful hills would run red when he was done.

  Three of the five houses on the site were lit up, including Dale’s. But none of the neighbors were close enough to cause him any problems. He was a master of stealth.

  When tonight was over and the investigation began, Dale Zachary’s neighbors would shake their heads in puzzlement and declare they heard and saw nothing when the Durham Strangler struck. It gave him a thrill to envisage it. They would never sleep soundly in their beds again.

  Not up here.

  Yes, in just a few hours there would be a lot of negative equity in these former sheds. All those people with expensive mortgages on properties which soon wouldn’t be worth shit. The expectation would have given him a hard-on, if he wasn’t already rock-hard.

  In perfect darkness, Clint crept closer to the house.

  Matt’s Nissan was parked outside. Of course it was. He’d have been surprised if it wasn’t there.

  His day had gone to hell so far, but tonight was playing out exactly how he wanted it.

  He approached the house from the side, keeping clear of the sensor that would trip the front security lights. Not that anyone would pay attention out here. The lights were always being set off by badgers and foxes. No one would investigate, because no one expected any real intrusion. Not to their safe, exclusive world.